Wayne Rooney's dazzling wonder goal for Manchester United cannot blind us to Manchester City progress

Normally the goals that influence Manchester derbies are memorable more in
their significance than in their execution. An embarrassed back-heel, a
toe-poke in the fifth minute of injury time, stealing the ball from the
opposing right back as he daydreams on the edge of his area: these are the
efforts that generally decide things when reds meet blues.

Midway through the second half of Saturday’s encounter, Manchester City’s fans – doing their trademark celebratory dance, bouncing with their backs to the action – were convinced that David Silva’s equaliser, deflecting Edin Dzeko’s misdirected shot off his kidneys, was another addition to the catalogue of grubby goals that matter rather than illuminate.

And then Wayne Rooney went airborne. From the moment the ball left his right shin and headed for the top corner of Joe Hart’s net, everything changed. Everyone inside Old Trafford – red, blue, Sam Allardyce chuckling mightily in the directors’ box – knew they had witnessed something extraordinary.

Sir Alex Ferguson called it the best goal he had seen at the ground. Roberto Mancini graciously acknowledged it as the type of strike which requires an opponent to do nothing more than applaud. Rooney himself called it the finest he had ever scored.

It was a fantasy goal, a moment of unabashed audacity, the sort of thing normally only encountered by us mortals during online games of Fifa. And immediately it was seized upon by those looking for added meaning.

As Rooney stood arms spread, expression impassive, in celebratory homage to Andrew Flintoff, everyone in the red sections of the ground was convinced that this effort meant something more than just three points gained on the march for the title. It announced that the boy was back.

Almost a year since his career went awry with an ankle injury against Bayern Munich, this was the strike that demonstrated he had shed his demons and was ready once more ready to assume his position as England’s finest.

But perhaps what is more intriguing is what his stupendous effort disguised rather than what it clarified. Not least about the condition of Rooney’s re-emergence.

Old Trafford is notorious for the woeful nature of its mobile phone signal. Texts can take half an hour to arrive at their destination. So it was that the message I had been sent from a United-supporting friend at half-time appeared on my phone about five minutes after that wonder strike.

“Get Rooney off,” it read. “He’s gone.”

The timing may have been awry, but the message had a point. Far from crowning his renaissance, Rooney’s performance until his goal had been wholly undistinguished. True, he wasn’t helped that he was isolated alone up front by United’s defensive formation.

True, in Vincent Kompany he was up against a centre back at the height of his powers. But even so, his contribution had been distinctly below par. Indeed, even in the build-up to his goal, his touch was off-kilter.

In a quick-witted exchange of passes on the edge of the City area, his contribution was a ballooned miscue which drew an audible sigh of exasperation from the crowd. Fortunately, the ball fell kindly to Paul Scholes, whose sharp pass found Nani, who produced the inviting cross from which Rooney so gloriously profited.

But it wasn’t just Rooney’s contribution that was skewed by that goal. City’s too was put in an unflattering light. There was much amusement in the press room at Mike Summerbee’s blue-eyed and grumbly post-match analysis on Sky.

But the old City stalwart was right to point out that, if you take Rooney’s goal out of the equation, his team had the better of the game. Shedding the defensive straitjacket that had characterised so many of their away efforts this season, City looked a tight, organised, properly constructed operation, the complete antidote to the comedy blues of old. Add a left back and a bit of pace to the wings and this is some side Mancini is developing.

Had it not been for Chris Smalling announcing himself with a superb, composed performance in the heart of United’s defence, Summerbee was right: they may well have won.

Afterwards Mancini talked of how it had taken him more than two seasons in Milan finally to win a derby in charge of Inter. And once he had, the titles started to flow. Clearly he sees a similar pattern emerging in Manchester.

And that may be the true meaning of this fixture: the blues are now closer than ever to altering the balance of power in the city. But before they can assume any sense of superiority, City’s followers are once more obliged to recognise that their neighbours have something no amount of money can buy: by whatever glorious method of delivery, they simply know how to win.